


The Fall

by lmeden



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-16
Updated: 2010-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:08:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmeden/pseuds/lmeden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Into an ancient, crumbling palace, the combatants retreat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jougetsu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jougetsu/gifts).



> Thank you to my betas, [helenvalentine](http://helenvalentine.livejournal.com/) and [carbonel](http://carbonel.livejournal.com/), who helped me immensely with this story. And to my recipient, I hope that you enjoy this. ♥

In the long banquet hall, with its battered feasting table intact and sturdy, the floor is stone; so too must be the walls, Laurence reasons, though they are covered by wooden panels and carvings. Figures of angels and devils, locked in an eternal and vicious battle, stare down; contorted visages and accusatory fingers pull away from the high relief of wood that their bodies are trapped within to cast condemnation upon those below. Laurence glances at them briefly, unwilling to weather their attention. He notices Temeraire hood his gaze against them. Perhaps this is not the best place to take refuge, but it is quiet, at the least.

One of the long walls is not a wall at all, but a long series of windows suspended in space by thin, curved struts of stone. Candlelight pours from a low-hanging candelabra, thoughtfully lit by nameless, unseen servants, illuminating architecture that might be lost in the cold gray light of the day.

Laurence stares out the window, above the treetops of the dark forest that grows right up to the walls of this crumbling palace, towards the rising smoke near the horizon. A dull orange glow flickers beneath it, the only evidence of a raging fire that consumes much of the battlefield there, and the bodies strewn across it. Fat flakes of snow drift through the air.

“You cannot believe that she would have let you live,” he says, thinking of Lien, crumpled on the cold battleground, perhaps hidden by snow, and the disbelief that had consumed her as she had fallen away from Temeraire, dead before her body touched the ground. Then, the Emperor’s surrender, which had followed in a cloud of white flags – it could have been moments or hours later, Laurence cannot properly recall. He glances back.

Temeraire curls in the room, tenuously. The upward curve of his back brushes against the carvings on the ceiling, shaking them with every breath. The arch and spines of his back are hidden by the shadows of the ceiling. His great claws shriek as they skim over the rough stone floor, leaving shining tracks behind them that Temeraire does not glance at. He shifts his wings, and his scales rustle in a chilling susurrus. He pulls them in close.

Laurence does not wish to know how Temeraire is going to remove himself from the room – entering it was a feat of acrobatics in itself, and turning to leave through the wide hall, now hidden from sight by Temeraire’s body, seems an impossibility. His slightest movement sends claws, wings, or spines hovering far too close to the ancient architecture. At least Temeraire’s flight crew is not here; they wait, with his heavy harness, in the courtyard outside. Laurence remains out of the way beside the wide window, and listens for Temeraire’s answer.

His neck lies along the long banquet table that stretches half the length of the room, the candelabra hovering just above his neck-spines. Temeraire snarls, scaled skin pulling back to reveal long, yellowed teeth. The one eye that Laurence can see focuses on him, and narrows, the pupil constricting.

“Not for an instant did I think that she would show me mercy. She was too proud for it.”

It is true – Lien was a very prideful dragon. But -.

“You did not think that she might abandon the Napoleon at the last?”

Temeraire’s face relaxes and he turns his gaze back to the far wall, blinking slowly. “I had hoped for it.” His voice is so quiet as to be the merest hiss. “I had hoped that she might see the wrongness of her actions, that in the end she might wish to return to her home.”

Of course she had not. Instead, she had fought for Napoleon to the very last, though his war had been lost for months. The war had stretched for far too long, and cost far too much – Laurence had feared the desperation that he had seen on the British Generals’ faces, just the night before. Temeraire’s blow to Lien, which knocked her from the air and killed her at the last, was only the end of it. And Temeraire has been quiet since, unnaturally so. Laurence fears it is shock over killing a dragon that he knew so well, and who was so like him in many ways, that has overpowered him. He does not know how he can counter that sorrow.

Laurence looks back out the window. Perhaps they should leave. Their presence in the palace is a formality, brought about by Lien’s death and its role in the Emperor Napoleon’s surrender. Just a few rooms away, they are negotiating a peace. The Admiralty and Government had thought to invite the two of them as a concession to their roles in this war, but they are of no use in the making of treaties and signing of papers. Of course, Temeraire might have been, had he not been so quietened. Suddenly Laurence thinks of the Emperor as he saw him last, hawk-sharp eyes attent despite his hunched posture and boots covered in mud, standing next to a flaring fireplace. The negotiations may turn out to be a different kind of battle altogether.

The two of them should be out on the battlefields, where fires burn and rage, and where a new fight is only just beginning, where there are lives to be saved and bodies to be buried and burnt. Napoleon, after _everything_ , is none of their business.

Temeraire is staring across the room, and Laurence has not a single idea of what he is looking at. He walks over to him and lays one gloved hand upon the delicate scales surrounding Temeraire’s nostrils. It is much warmer here than near the window, and he lowers his forehead to rest just next to his hand. He is tired.

Temeraire’s hot breath streams down his front, penetrating the thick leather of his flying coat, through waistcoat and shirt and skin, warming him clear through. “We should go,” he murmurs. They can help on the battlefield, help find and move the wounded, help control any lingering pockets of chaos. Do something other than sit here and think.

Temeraire replies with a deep hum of agreement and Laurence steps back. He retreats full across the room, leaning against the wall farthest from Temeraire, who will likely need all the space in the room in order to leave it. He may end up knocking against a wall and bringing the entire thing down upon them, anyway.

But Temeraire does not intend to use the wide hall that they had entered through at all – he reaches one nimble leg out, just barely shifting his weight, and with a thrust of curled talons smashes the wide window into pieces. The crash is terrifying, and Laurence turns his face away, drawing his coat collar up and ducking his head down. He does not want to meet with the wrong edge of a flying shard.

Soon the crunching and crumbling gives way to silence, and Laurence looks up to see Temeraire moving, sinuous. He snakes his head forward, gliding just inches over the worn table top, and cranes it out the shattered frame of a window. On the ceiling, wood creaks and screams, and pieces of carvings snap off and fall to the floor. Still in a crouch, he crawls forwards, his talons grasping at the opening where the window once was, a few sharp triangles of glass pointing upwards, and slides his shoulders through, slipping outside in one long movement. His tails runs after him, slowly, until its tip disappears out of sight.

Laurence steps away from the wall and is almost to the window, the first shards of glass beginning to grind beneath his boots, throwing his balance askew, when Temeraire’s head reappears from below.

“I will wait on the rooftop,” he states calmly, though Laurence can hear the eagerness lurking beneath his nonchalance. They are of one mind in wishing release from this place. Temeraire reaches up, grasping hold of something sturdy on the palace’s outer wall, shattering another window, by the sound of it, and pulls himself up and away.

Laurence walks towards the open window, tucking his gloved hands into the pockets of his coat against the bitingly cold wind, feeling once more the somewhat crumpled parchment that has sat there since, was it only this morning, that had sealed Lien’s fate with just ten words - _diplomacy is of no use, she is to be destroyed_ \- and steps over the sharp patterns of broken glass, out onto the window’s ledge. He turns and cranes his head back. Temeraire climbs rapidly up the building’s wall, sending carved ornamentation, large and small, falling down to shatter against the rocky forest floor below them.

Laurence steps inside. He must find a way up to the rooftop. He could climb up the wall after Temeraire, most likely – experience has made him adept enough at climbing – but he would prefer to do so only as a last resort. He walks back through the room, glancing briefly at the still-swinging candelabra, the candles guttering if not darkened and smoking, and heads down the long hall, lit only by the grey winter light that streams in with the wind.


End file.
